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Friday, November 02, 2007

"Moral equivalence"

My post on waterboarding elicited a predictable response. However, many of the objections were purely impressionistic. And that, too, was predictable.

It’s hard to respond when critics don’t give you an argument to respond to. And it’s not my job to make their argument for them.

However, I think it may be a useful exercise to try, if possible, to articulate their inarticulate reaction. For their basic problem seems to be an inadequate moral toolkit to evaluate the morality of a given position. Put another way, they appear to have only one tool in their toolbox.

From what I can tell, their objection goes something like this:

If we use the same methods as the enemy, then we’re as bad as the enemy.

Or, alternatively: we’re guilty of a double standard when we do the same thing.

Or, alternatively, unless we treat everyone the same way, we’re guilty of relativism.

Or, alternatively, would you like someone to do that to you?

If we try to turn this into an argument, I suppose it would go something like this:

We should treat everyone equally.

The common denominator is that critics like this judge all moral issues by a single criterion. Therefore, if you and I don’t judge every moral issue by a single criterion, they think you and I are being inconsistent. But, of course, we’re only being inconsistent with their simplistic approach to moral deliberation. It hardly follows that we are being inconsistent with our own principles.

And the problem when you get into a conversation with folks like this is that they can only keep one idea in their nogging at the time, since, for them, it’s all about applying a single rule in every single case.

For some reason, it doesn’t occur to them that there is more than one morally relevant consideration in evaluating the morality of a particular position or course of action. Let’s take a few examples:

Should we discriminate between blacks and whites? I suppose most folks would answer in the negative. We should treat blacks and whites equally.

But suppose a rape victim says that she was raped by a white man in his mid-twenties. As the police search for a suspect, who should they be looking for? Should they be looking for black men and Chinamen and Grandmothers and fourth-graders? Or should they look for a suspect who fits the description?

Shouldn’t they begin to narrow their search parameters to white male twenty-somethings?

What if someone screams: “racial profiling”? Well, yes, it is racial profiling. The police are looking for a white suspect. So what?

Let’s take another example. A woman is mugged at knifepoint. Does she have a right to buy a handgun to defend herself in case she’s accosted again?

But doesn’t that mean she’s stooping to the level of the mugger? He uses force, so she responds with even more force.

But why shouldn’t she respond in kind? Indeed, up the ante by arming herself with a superior weapon?

Let’s take another example. Suppose a hostile government is spying on US installations. Don’t we have a right to spy on them in return? Or is someone going to say that when we respond to espionage with counterespionage, we’re guilty of the same thing?

Let’s take another example. A hostile government has missiles pointed at the US mainland. Should we respond by pointing missiles at their direction as a deterrent? Or should we unilaterally disarm on the grounds that we mustn't fight fire with fire?

Likewise, if they attack, should we refrain from launching a counterstrike on the grounds of moral equivalence?

Reasonable people should be able to see from these counterexamples that there’s something fundamentally flawed with the idea of judging all actions by only one criterion.

At a minimum, the criterion needs to be qualified:

We should treat everyone equally all other things being equal. But if things are unequal, then we should sometimes be inequitable.

In this reformulation, you have to keep two ideas in your head at once.

I’m reminded of folks who think it’s clever to point out that American foreign policy used to support Saddam Hussein and the Mujahidin. Then they gleefully pounce on the inconsistency in our foreign policy.

But all this shows me is their incapacity for forming moral judgments. They seriously imagine that moral consistency means always doing the same thing regardless of the circumstances, so that if you ever threw your support behind someone, then you’re committing to backing him forever.

But what this overlooks is why you supported him in the first place. The basic principle of a military alliance is that you support those who support you and oppose those who oppose you. If supporters become opponents, or opponents become supporters, you change sides.

There’s nothing the least bit inconsistent about that. But that does require the ability to actually keep two ideas in mind instead of one. And if you can’t think about more than one thing at a time, it will seem inconsistent.

Ordinarily, a woman doesn’t have a right to shoot a man. But she does have a right to shoot a mugger or a rapist. She doesn’t treat all men the same way, because not all men are the same. Some men are relevantly dissimilar. A mugger or rapist is not morally equivalent to a loving father or a caring husband.

Let’s go back to the case of waterboarding. Should we either waterboard everyone or no one? But that’s simpleminded.

We wouldn’t waterboard a high-value terrorist who volunteers what he knows. And we wouldn’t waterboard just anyone we pull of the street. We’re after information, remember. A particular kind of information. It’s only applicable to a particular kind of informant.

You wouldn’t waterboard Fanny Crosby. She’s not a terrorist. She doesn’t know about impending plots to attack the United States and kill innocent civilians for no good reason.

If policemen use guns, and gangsters use guns, does that make the police the moral equivalent of the mob? No, because there’s more to ethical valuation than similar methods and techniques. What you intend to do and why does make a morally significant difference. Using a gun to murder someone, and using a gun to defend yourself against a murderer are not morally equivalent.

Both a surgeon and a carjacker use a knife, but heart surgery and carjacking are not morally equivalent.

Likewise, people can forfeit certain rights. Ordinarily, you don’t have a right to kill me. But if I attack you without provocation, with life-threatening force, then I forfeit my own claim on life.

This should all be so obvious that it ought to be unnecessary to spell it out. Why do some people ignore the obvious?

Because they don’t want to make a minimal intellectual effort. It’s so much easier to have one rule of thumb for anything and everything, anyone and everyone. You can mechanically apply your wooden rule regardless of motives or circumstances or consequences.

But there’s nothing moral about that. To the contrary, this represents the abdication of moral discrimination. Rubberstamping the answer to every ethical question with the same self-inking stamp is immoral and amoral.

11 comments:

"If we use the same methods as the enemy, then we’re as bad as the enemy."

Before any argument can be made the "we" must be defined. If the "we" is the government, that's their own business. If the "we" is supposed to be Christians, Christians are to love their enemies and do to others as they would have them do to them. But what if the people in government are Christians? They can't be because the government of necessity must render evil for evil, which is forbidden of a Christian.

"Before any argument can be made the ‘we’ must be defined. If the ‘we’ is the government, that's their own business. If the ‘we’ is supposed to be Christians, Christians are to love their enemies and do to others as they would have them do to them.”

That’s good Amish theology. Are you Amish? I didn’t know the Amish used the Internet. Kinda hitech for the Amish.

Are you a pacifist? Do you oppose the Second Amendment? Do you oppose Christian soldiers and policeman?

It isn’t possible to be equally loving to everyone. Suppose a man breaks into your home while you’re away, ties up your wife and kids, plans to rape your wife and torture your kids.

If you arrive home, would you be prepared to use lethal force to restrain him? How are you a loving husband and father unless you’re prepared to defend your family against a violent assailant? If you’re loving towards the assailant, you’re unloving towards your family.

“But what if the people in government are Christians? They can't be because the government of necessity must render evil for evil, which is forbidden of a Christian.”

This begs the question of whether self-defense is evil. In the OT, the Jews were commanded to wage war against the Canaanites. Was that an evil command? Was God commanding his people to do evil?

"Before any argument can be made the 'we' must be defined. If the 'we' is the government, that's their own business. If the 'we' is supposed to be Christians, Christians are to love their enemies and do to others as they would have them do to them. But what if the people in government are Christians? They can't be because the government of necessity must render evil for evil, which is forbidden of a Christian."

Jesus spoke in contexts, as everybody else does, including contexts involving hyperbole, a limited audience, and other qualifiers. For example, the same Jesus who speaks of how the rich young ruler should give all of his possessions away (Luke 18:22) shortly thereafter commends a man who only gave some of his possessions away (Luke 19:8-10) and suggests that investing money, not just giving it away, is acceptable (Luke 19:12-23). Jesus and His disciples owned property, and so did other early Christians (Matthew 8:14, Philemon 2, etc.). Jesus, like other ancient Jewish (and non-Jewish) teachers, often spoke in general terms and used hyperbole to put emphasis on a theme (a plank in an eye, a camel going through the eye of a needle, etc.). Not only do we know that hyperbole was common among ancient Jewish teachers (as it is in many modern contexts), but we also know that the nearby Biblical context refers to Jesus as having a home (Matthew 4:13) and refers to His followers as having possessions (Matthew 8:14), and we know that Christians just after Jesus' time had possessions (Acts 12:12, Philemon 2, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, etc.).

Jesus' commands, like principles in any belief system, are interpreted in light of a larger context. One principle is weighed against another, and something that's appropriate in one circumstance may not be in another. A command to give to others would be interpreted within a belief system that also involved the responsibility of providing for one's family, for example. As D.A. Carson puts it, "Verse 40 [of Matthew 5] is clearly hyperbolic: no first-century Jew would go home wearing only a loin cloth." (The Expositor's Bible Commentary: Matthew, Chapters 1 Through 12 [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1995], p. 157) Thus, a passage like Proverbs 26:4-5 will deliberately set two contrary-sounding principles together, trusting that the reader will realize that each principle is valid in different circumstances. Some of Jesus' expressions in Matthew 5 are popular in our world today: "go the extra mile", "turn the other cheek", etc. Just as we today interpret and apply such principles in a context that involves examining circumstances and weighing one priority against another, so did people in ancient times.

If we apply these principles to the subject you're addressing above, we should note that Jesus was addressing personal behavior, not the behavior of governments. You acknowledge that distinction above, but then you go on to suggest that a Christian in government would be acting only as an individual, not as an extension of the government. But, then, why make the distinction between government and the individual in the first place? All government decisions are going to involve individuals.

You tell us that there "can't be" Christians in government. But Jesus and the earliest leaders of Christianity referred to Christians in government and approved of the collecting of taxes, the government's use of the sword, etc. (Matthew 17:24-27, Luke 3:12-14, Romans 13:1-7, etc.) If your interpretation of Jesus' comments in the Sermon on the Mount can't make sense of the surrounding context, such as how Jesus and the earliest Christians lived and what they said elsewhere in the same documents you're citing, then there's something wrong with your interpretation.

Why would a pacifist oppose the Second Amendment? What sense does that even make?

How do my comments on the government "beg the question of whether self-defense is evil." The government executing wrath on evil doers and self-defense aren't the same subject. In the one case, you take a person who may or may not actually be guilty and inflict some punishment on them. In the other, you catch the person red handed doing something to you, and repel them with minimal force. Are these two the same? I don't see how anyone could claim so. Self-defense (by minimal force), further, is not rendering evil for evil, but beating the bloody pulp out of someone would be, as is the punishing of criminals. Let the heathen then and pseudo-Christians beat the bloody pulp out of people and punish malefactors, and let true Christians be protected by wicked men which are God's sword.

"You tell us that there 'can't be' Christians in government. But Jesus and the earliest leaders of Christianity referred to Christians in government and approved of the collecting of taxes, the government's use of the sword, etc."

You cannot construe Romans 13 to be a lesson teaching Christians how to be rulers, when Paul clearly speaks of the rulers as being external. He doesn't say "oh ye Christian rulers and magistrates, ye are the minister of God to execute wrath, etc." but "He is, etc." Jesus plainly told Pilate "my kingdom is not of this world" and it is clear from Jesus' teaching in Matthew 10 "The disciple is not above his master, etc." that he intended for the church to always be the underdog in the world not the ruler of the world. He never intended national churches merged with the state or Christian princes or any such thing. The Bible is totally silent of any admonition to Christian magistrates or rulers. A tax-collector is wholly another thing, since a tax collector is more or less an accountant, not someone who goes about killing and such.

" Why would a pacifist oppose the Second Amendment? What sense does that even make?”

If you can’t see the self-evident connection, then you suffer from a serious intellectual impediment. A pacifist opposes killing. The right to bear arms assumes the right of self-defense by lethal force if necessary.

“How do my comments on the government ‘beg the question of whether self-defense is evil.’ The government executing wrath on evil doers and self-defense aren't the same subject. In the one case, you take a person who may or may not actually be guilty and inflict some punishment on them. In the other, you catch the person red handed doing something to you, and repel them with minimal force. Are these two the same? I don't see how anyone could claim so. Self-defense (by minimal force), further, is not rendering evil for evil, but beating the bloody pulp out of someone would be, as is the punishing of criminals. Let the heathen then and pseudo-Christians beat the bloody pulp out of people and punish malefactors, and let true Christians be protected by wicked men which are God's sword.”

You can’t even follow your own argument. To begin with, self-defense isn’t limited to minimal force since minimal force may be inadequate to defend yourself. The right of self-defense assumes that you have the right to use as much force as necessary to defend yourself—up to and including lethal force. It depends on the nature of the threat. You pay lip-service to the principle of self-defense, only to introduce ad hoc restrictions.

You also said, “Christians are to love their enemies and do to others as they would have them do to them.”

But there’s nothing loving about self-defense. You don’t love your enemies by defending yourself against your enemies. And your enemies don’t want you to defend yourself, so that’s not what they want to have done to them. To the contrary, they want to attack you and yours with impunity.

What’s the moral difference between a policemen or soldier who uses a gun to defend his country or community against wrongdoers, and a civilian who uses a gun in self-defense? Is one more loving that the other? Is one any closer to the golden rule? Why is one rendering evil for evil, but not the other?

"You cannot construe Romans 13 to be a lesson teaching Christians how to be rulers, when Paul clearly speaks of the rulers as being external. He doesn't say 'oh ye Christian rulers and magistrates, ye are the minister of God to execute wrath, etc.' but 'He is, etc.' Jesus plainly told Pilate 'my kingdom is not of this world' and it is clear from Jesus' teaching in Matthew 10 'The disciple is not above his master, etc.'"

You're assuming what you need to prove. The wording of Romans 13 doesn't assume that Christians can't be part of the government. Any Christians who were part of the government at the time would have been a minority of the Christian population, so Paul would assume that most of his readers weren't government officials. But other passages suggest that believers were part of the government in some manner during the time of Jesus and the apostles (Luke 3:12-14, Acts 10:1-2, 16:27-36). And a passage like Romans 13 doesn't have to refer to Christians as government officials in order to contradict your position. If the passage refers to functions of the government such as the use of the sword in a positive manner (see also Acts 25:11), then why are we to believe that it's wrong for a government to use the sword?

Jesus' comment about the nature of His kingdom doesn't lead to your conclusion. You're assuming your conclusion without any accompanying argument. Jesus' kingdom can be unworldly without the conclusion following that no Christian can be part of any government. Jesus' kingdom isn't characterized by grocery stores or restaurants, but Christians can work at grocery stores and eat at restaurants.

You write:

"that he intended for the church to always be the underdog in the world not the ruler of the world"

An individual Christian isn't "the church". And even if a nation's government consisted entirely of Christians, it wouldn't therefore follow that the government in question is "the ruler of the world" or that Christianity is no longer an "underdog". What are the "underdog" passages of scripture that allegedly lead to your conclusions?

You write:

"He never intended national churches merged with the state or Christian princes or any such thing."

Aside from the fact that you're making assertions without any accompanying arguments, why would there have to be a "national church" that's "merged with the state" in order for an individual Christian to join the Air Force or become a mayor of a city?

You write:

"The Bible is totally silent of any admonition to Christian magistrates or rulers."

There a lot of occupations that scripture doesn't address directly. But we can apply broader principles to an occupation without having any Biblical passages that single out that occupation for discussion. And see the passages I've cited regarding believers who are tax collectors, soldiers, etc.

You write:

"A tax-collector is wholly another thing, since a tax collector is more or less an accountant, not someone who goes about killing and such."

You're changing your argument. You initially claimed that Christians can't be part of the government. Now you're claiming that they can't be part of a portion of the government that "kills and such", whereas they can be part of some other portion of the government. Why should we agree with your new argument? Was John the Baptist wrong in Luke 3:14? Was Luke wrong in his characterization of Cornelius in Acts 10? When you refer to "killing and such", what is the "such"? Would it include the activities of the Philippian jailer in Acts 16?

"Was John the Baptist wrong in Luke 3:14? 'Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.'"

Are you the same anonymous poster who replied earlier? This is one of the problems with posting anonymously. How are we supposed to know whether two anonymous posts are from the same person? How your comments above relate to what was posted earlier depends on whether you're the same person. I see no reason for anybody to post without any identification. I suspect that the cases in which people have a good reason to remain anonymous are small in number, but even if you have such a reason, why not use some sort of screen name that won't reveal your identity?

The original issue raised was whether Christians can serve in government. Even if we were to accept your rendering of Luke 3:14, the fact would remain that approval is being given to continuing in a government position. And you haven't addressed the other passages I cited.

But why should we accept the translation of Luke 3 that you've posted? The Updated New American Standard has "do not take money from anyone by force". The American Standard has "extort from no man by violence". The New International has "don't extort money". The English Standard has "do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation". The New King James has "do not intimidate anyone". Etc. Would you explain why you've quoted the King James, a translation that's hundreds of years old, and why you've assumed that the King James translators had your interpretation in mind? Then explain how you reconcile your reading of Luke 3 with the other passages I cited. We repeatedly read about soldiers, warfare, and related themes in the gospels, Acts, and elsewhere in the New Testament, and the message that's conveyed isn't pacifism.

Robert Karris notes that "The injunctions that John gives to the soldiers reflect Augustan ideals of how the military should conduct itself." (The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Raymond Brown, et al., ed. [Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1990], p. 686) Darrell Bock notes that "John commands the soldiers not to use strong-arm tactics to gain financial advantage. The term is used only here in the NT but was commonly used this way in Koine Greek" (Luke, Volume 1, 1:1-9:50 [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1994], p. 313).

Wow, that's great reasoning. I didn't realize we could so easily justify our actions in any case.

Lets keep going. The enemy beheads our contractors and soldiers on video tape and broadcasts it on the news. I guess that makes it ok for us too.

They murdered civilians, I guess that makes it ok for us too.

If they were to land troops here and rape our women and children that would make it ok for us to do too.

Your side of this argument has to be qualified as well. There is a line that has to be drawn where the actions are morally wrong in and of themselves. Do you have such a line Steve? Or can all things be justified this way?

You wouldn’t waterboard Fanny Crosby. She’s not a terrorist. She doesn’t know about impending plots to attack the United States and kill innocent civilians for no good reason.

Do you know that for sure? Can we be certain w/out torturing her to make sure she won't give up some information?

I presented a carefully qualified position, drawing a number of basic distinctions. Your childish little rant doesn't even attempt to interact with the specific argumentation.

This shows that you have no intelligent alternative to offer. It also betrays your moral and intellectual frivolity in dealing with serious ethical issues. Unless and until you are able to exhibit some modicum of rational analysis, you’ve said nothing that merits a reply.

“Do you know that for sure? Can we be certain w/out torturing her to make sure she won't give up some information?”

By your logic, we should never convict and punish someone for a crime since we can never know “for sure” that he is guilty as charged. But even the Mosaic law, which was an inspired law code, did not demand apodictic certainty as a legal standard of evidence.

Once again, you’re not applying any reason to the issue. Just venting and hyperventilating.

I really don't know why I bother to continue to try. You are quite clearly not interested in having any sort of rational discourse on such issues. If I post a complete reply, you take some side tangent, or try to find the weakest part of the argument and focus on that and throw in some vitriol and mocking language and call it an argument - as if somehow that distracts from the bankruptcy of your position.

If I try to narrow the focus and only address one particular part, you claim that my lack of providing you more material somehow demonstrates I don't have anything else to say.

My point in terms of torturing her was not about certainty - it was about the same thing the rest of my post was about. Drawing lines.

I asked you a very simple question. Given that your position as stated provides for a wide range of things that at least some of us would find to be clearly wrong, where is your line where you can no longer justify your actions in this manner?

Further, I want to know where it is. I ask because I don't believe you have one and that's part of your problem.

First you denied there was any real torture. That people were crying about terrorists being questioned for extended periods and having to suffer some loud music or less than five-star fare.

I denied this was my definition of torture and tried to get you to operate under the functional definition of real torture which you flatly refused to do - preferring to dismiss me as a bleeding-heart liberal.

Then, real torture became the issue. Cigarette burns, electric shock, and waterboarding. You grabbed on waterboarding and made it out to be not such a big deal, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Now you have come up with this philosophical argument to justify our behavior based on the behavior of our enemies without any lines drawn anywhere to suggest there are limits to this.

I drew some things I thought were extreme enough that the two of us could both agree are definitely wrong and asked if they were justifiable in this manner - hoping you'd say no just for my own peace of mind that you do have a line somewhere that you draw in terms of what evils the government is allowed to perpetrate.